Did Yahweh Set Adam Up?

[Godscreated]

I suppose Adam was set-up in the same way a teacher sets-up students with a test.
The kid fails the test and blames the teacher.

Your apparent error is in the comparison.  

A teacher does not state, "Don't touch that book over there" and then watches to either pass or fail the student on whether or not the book was touched.

Also, why would an omniscient god need to test anyone? 

He doesn't, not for Himself, the test and their results are for us, same with teachers testing student, they do not need the test, the student does.

GC

[Silver]

How else were they supposed to get to chapter two Kitan?

Logically, of course.  

[The Grand Nudger]

The purpose of this test, for us..was what...again? How is it supposed to have benefited the "student"?

(last time I failed a test, btw, I got an "f"..not a generational curse...I;m a little concerned about this "teacher"s qualifications and state of mind.)

[Silver]

He doesn't, not for Himself, the test and their results are for us, same with teachers testing student, they do not need the test, the student does.

GC

A teacher shows the test result in order for the student to know whether or not he needs improvement.  I have received no test results from your imaginary friend.  

[Chad32]

Let's just say that, like other stories of the old testament, there are a lot of holes in the Eden story if you try to take it literally. As a metaphor, it could be interpreted many ways. I'm not sure if the early jews or christians considered the story literal. If I were to take the story literally, do I think Adam and Eve and their descendants got a raw deal? Yes. As a disclaimer, though, I'm not exactly on the side of Yahweh in this discussion anyway.

The teacher/test analogy kind of fails, because in school teachers give tests out with the expectation that the people that try to pass it will succeed. Yaweh puts people in a position where the only way out is to beg to be let out by the guy that put them there.

[The Grand Nudger]

However the story was meant to be taken - what is absolutely and demonstrably missing is the idea of original sin or of death as a punishment for sin.  Jews do not now, nor have they ever, to our knowledge, believed in this. The narrative explicitly references A & E's mortality when it mentions that they would become immortal by eating from the tree of life.  You don't have to become something that you already are.  

Not that the christians asked......but maybe they should have.

And the Etrnl Gd said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the Tree Of Life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Etrnl Gd sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the Tree of Life.

G3:22-24

[robvalue]

I can't think of any sensible interpretation of the garden of Eden story as a metaphor. The only messages I can get from it are:

"Do what God says or else!"

"People often do the opposite of what you tell them to do."

"God used to walk about on the earth, and was not omniscient nor able to execute a simple plan without fucking it up and taking it out on someone else."

Does anyone have an interpretation of it that isn't stupid? I mean, if its main purpose is to show us how evil and rotten we are, it fails hard as it portrays God as the evil one, unbalanced one and people as creatures who knew no better.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sexual identity, the coming into age or coming into knowledge that sets one apart or at odds with ones parents and alters that relationship.  That which expels you from the  garden of your youth - provided by your father, that which expels you from innocence - that which makes you culpable?  There's an amusing rabbinical opinion that the knowledge gained was, in fact, knowledge of the law.  Before they possessed this knowledge they could not offend god, could not do wrong. There is also a strong current of god or divine forces as capricious, callous, or cruel..why assume that the authors didn't intend this to be so? Life can be cruel, callous....it can feel like the nameless, infinitely vast forces surrounding you are decidedly inhuman.

[robvalue]

Thank you, yes I can see that being a possible message.

Indeed, who knows what the authors intended the characters to come off as? Maybe they thought it was hilarious to write an obviously evil character who keeps saying "I am good" all the time.

[The Grand Nudger]

-and maybe people tossed him a little extra coin if he told porn stories about naked men and women fucking in the bushes.  One never knows.